Amazon Game Studios struggles to find a hit | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Game Studios struggles to find a hit

bloomberg.com

20 pointsystad12 comments

We see a lot of success from Amazon, but they pump out duds at about the same rate. Remember their phone fiasco? (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Phone)

Overall I think Amazon’s products offer mediocre design and execution except for the convenience factor - their successful products manage to be much more convenient than competitor’s. Especially when the end product can leverage the stronger aspects of Amazon’s business model. Take Kindle for example — Kindle has mediocre UX compared to eg iPad, but is much much cheaper (leveraging that supply chain), and has a more convenient store (again leveraging the OG book business).

When it comes to video games, there’s very little convenience advantage on Amazon’s side, and very little way to leverage Amazon’s existing business to improve the product experience for end user.

Like in other areas, I’m sure if Amazon keeps plowing billions into video games they’ll eventually build an expertise — I just wonder if the company has the patience, or if this area will go the way of the Fire Phone.

> Kindle has mediocre UX compared to eg iPad, but is much much cheaper (leveraging that supply chain)

Does the supply chain really have anything to do with why the Kindle is cheaper than the iPad? I grant that Amazon has a good supply chain...but Apple seems to, too.

I would've thought that the Kindle is cheaper than the iPad because Amazon set out to build a product that is cheaper in every way. (I don't mean that as criticism of the Kindle.)

Lately their Twitch streaming service has also been declining in quality a lot and being plagued by anti-user behaviour such as attempting to degrade the experience quite ruthlessly for adblocking users, inconsistent banning with little communication, politically correct banning of words like "simp" and various emotes, allowing titty streamers to continue to push the limits, etc....

Overall YouTube is starting to seem more and more appealing as a streaming platform and has just recently released clips experimentally. If YouTube keeps adding new features that match and are better than Twitch I could see switches starting to happen. Currently YouTube already offers a better streaming experience in some aspects it's just missing a bit.

Twitch's whole gaming department leadership when it comes to streaming games or making games seems to have no idea what they are doing. They also seem to have no idea what their target demographic wants and likes. They end up listening to angry Twitter users over their actual users.

Amazon is extremely archaic when it comes to design, in my opinion, and it’s like if Exxon-Mobil suddenly made consumer products. Amazon also has a dark pattern of seemingly withholding or slowly leaking new features. For example, the Kindle sees very little updates, and for new versions they just add one or two things that should have been in the previous versions but still leave off obvious things. This makes it so they get repeat buys from people. Take the Kindle Oasis for example. I suspect that they’ve had the warm screen ready for a while, but they didn’t release it on the prior version. They also have not updated it to use USB-C, and I would guess we will finally see that tweak in the next version.

Amazon created or published some very good mobile games for the fire ecosystem way back in like 2013 or earlier. They also had a prime benefit called "actually free" games for fire that effectively gave you a unlimited currency in some free to play games, as well as free access to some paid games.

Both of those initiatives were quite nice and improved my view of the prime program. I do wonder what an alternate time line looks like where they had focused on mobile gaming and creating a subscription gaming experience rather than first party stuff.

There doesn't seem to be much take up of their Lumberyard engine either I've noticed. EVERYWHERƎ, the upcoming game from Leslie Benzies (Ex Rockstar Games) started development with it but switched to Unreal Engine last year.

https://twitter.com/everywhere_game/status/13272499834401013...

> Executives under Frazzini initially rejected charges that New World, an Amazon game that would ask players to colonize a mythical land and murder inhabitants who bear a striking resemblance to Native Americans, was racist. They relented after Amazon hired a tribal consultant who found that the portrayal was indeed offensive

What a ridicilous world we live in.

This is a pretty short comment. Which part do you find ridiculous?

The part where someone would claim this is racist.

> the portrayal was indeed offensive

You seem to have missed that part of your own quote. They're not saying the idea was racist, they're saying the implementation was racist. No doubt is was portraying the natives as wild savages which is indeed racist.

Is it impossible for a game to be racist? If not, how do you know this instance wasn’t racist? Do you know the game better than the people working on it?

This is not people on twitter complaining, these were actual professionals who were a part of the project, I see nothing ridiculous about it.

or phone.

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